Difference between revisions of "Why Do Women Live Longer Than Men"

Revision as of 00:59, 14 January 2022

Everywhere in the world women live longer than men - but this was not always the case. The available data from rich countries shows that women didn't live longer than men in the 19th century. What's the reason why women have a longer life span than men? Why has this advantage gotten larger in the past? We only have partial evidence and the evidence is not sufficient to draw a definitive conclusion. While we are aware that there are biological, psychological and environmental factors that play an integral role in the longevity of women over men, we don't know how much each factor contributes.

We know that women are living longer than men, regardless of their weight. But, this is not because of certain non-biological aspects have changed. What are these changing factors? Some are well known and افضل شامبو وبلسم relatively straightforward, like the fact that men smoke more often. Some are more complex. For example, there is evidence that in rich countries the female advantage increased in part because infectious diseases used to affect women disproportionately a century ago, so advances in medicine that reduced the long-term health burden from infectious diseases, especially for survivors, ended up raising women's longevity disproportionately.

Everywhere in the world women tend to live longer than men
The first chart below shows life expectancy at birth for men and women. We can see that all countries are above the diagonal parity line , this means that in all countries that a baby girl can be expected to live for longer than a newborn boy.1

This chart is interesting in that it shows that while the female advantage is present everywhere, country-specific differences are huge. In Russia, women live for 10 years longer than males. In Bhutan the difference is less than half a calendar year.

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The female advantage in life expectancy was less in rich countries as compared to the present.
Let's see how the female longevity advantage has changed over time. The chart below shows male and female life expectancy when they were born in the US during the period 1790 to 2014. Two distinct features stand out.

First, there is an upward trend. and women in the US are living much, much longer than they did 100 years ago. This is in line with historical increases in life expectancy everywhere in the world.

The second is that there is a widening gap: The female advantage in life expectancy used to be very modest, but it grew substantially in the past century.

When you click on the option "Change country by country' in the chart, you are able to determine if these two points apply to the other countries having available information: Sweden, France and the UK.